Various machines, such as those that are used to dig, loosen, carry, compact, etc., different materials, may be equipped with object detection devices such as radio detection and ranging (radar) and/or light detection and ranging (lidar or LiDAR) devices. In one exemplary application, autonomous or semi-autonomous machines may use the object detection devices to detect objects in areas surrounding the machines as part of a collision avoidance mechanism. In any application where a machine is equipped with an object detection device such as a radar device, it may be desirable to ensure that the radar device is properly calibrated and positioned. Moreover, it may be desirable for people associated with the machine to be aware of the coverage region over which the radar device is capable of detecting objects, as well as the accuracy with which the radar device detects objects within the coverage region.
A system that may be used to calibrate sensors mounted on a vehicle is disclosed in U.S. Patent Publication No. 2010/0235129 to Sharma et al. that was published on Sep. 16, 2010 (the '129 publication). The system in the '129 publication incorporates vision sensors such as cameras with a lidar sensor to detect obstacles around the vehicle. The outputs from the vision sensor and the lidar sensor are correlated to produce fused sensor data the represents the detected obstacles. The tilt of the vision sensor may be adjusted based on the correlated outputs.
Although the system of the '129 publication may be useful for calibrating a multi-sensor system while performing object detection, the system may not be cost-effective because it requires at least two sensors to be mounted to the vehicle for each field of vision that is to be monitored. For example, the system of the '129 publication requires both a vision sensor and a lidar sensor when detecting objects around the vehicle. Moreover, while the '129 publication discloses calibrating the multi-sensor system, it does not disclose generating and displaying a graphical representation of the coverage regions for any of the sensors.
The disclosed coverage determining system is directed to overcoming one or more of the problems set forth above and/or other problems of the prior art.